While listening to previous podcast episodes there are always things I wish I had said or at least said differently. That's where blags come in. Welcome to Random Reviews Revisited, where either Geoff or I will go back and write about all the things we wished we talked about during the latest episode of the podcast. While we ultimately did enjoy and recommend the movie, I don't think we gave it the credit it deserved as far as what it accomplished. We briefly discussed its mash up of styles and genres, but I wanted to get into it a little deeper, especially the story of Ben.
The movie ultimately tells the story of a rough breakup and the challenges of isolation and loneliness that accompany it as seen through the eyes of an artist, Ben. The movie is narrated by Ben in a serious tone, or maybe just a British one it's difficult to tell. While there are some jokes mixed in, the opening scenes are mostly dark and emotional and detail Ben's insomnia after his breakup. The movie carries on in a similar fashion, juxtaposing humor with Ben's disconnected reality. He is floating through time seemingly unable to sleep or care about anything, except his art. Ben reveals early on his artistic focus is the human body. He finds the female body exceptional, and this can be seen when he initially freezes time.
Sure he goes through the store undressing all of the women but it is to draw them, to escape into his art. His time freezing is how he copes with the long work hours while drawing is how he copes with his breakup, and both are presented together in this scene. Even when he is undressing them he does it almost reverently, ensuring that he does not disturb anything. Throughout most of the movie Ben is quite disconnected from his fellow friends and employees. He's there for everything that happens and yet is also just outside of it, too consumed with his sadness. Similarly he is outside of everything when he freezes time, however here he has his art which is a comfort. And this is something he wishes he could share with someone. Ben longs for someone who like him can appreciate the beauty of a single frozen moment in time, but does not believe that he will ever find someone who can appreciate it like he does.
There is an interesting scene later in the film where Ben encounters another person when time is frozen. Initially it seems quite out of place, as the scene is quite tense, and really goes nowhere. The man runs away and Ben unfreezes time. That's it. It's a strange shift in tone for the film and is then immediately forgotten. Ben's reaction to the man is interesting though. He isn't scared, instead he is almost hopeful that there may be others like him, other people who can be there with him between the moments, appreciating them to their fullest as Ben does. Ben has finally bottomed out emotionally, and is starting the slow climb back up. He no longer feels total hopelessness in finding someone, he's been encouraged by this hooded stranger frozen with him in time, just as he has been encouraged by his growing feelings for Meredith.
The improvements to Ben continue to show, as he becomes more animated in the following scenes, especially after his coffee quasi-date with Meredith. This culminates in her asking him out to their Manager's birthday party which finally allows Ben to sleep again. However as we discussed, everything goes to shit when his ex attempts to kiss him there. This is the third time we see Ben freeze time as he tries desperately to undo the last instant. This is a painful moment for Ben, he knows that things with Meredith are ruined and that he cannot do anything to stop it. Ben is so close to Meredith in this moment but is still totally isolated and alone, frozen in time. Again he withdraws into his art, however now his focuses have aligned onto Meredith so he draws a creepily large number of drawings of her. Finally she sees how he really feels and is able to join him between the moments of time. Ben has now found his companion and feels known and understood as shown by Meredith being able to join him in frozen time.
When you strip away the humor this is such an "artsy" movie it's almost sickening, and yet I really liked it. I still can't figure out why it works so well. I feel like every filmmaker has that one "dream film" that they would love to make. It is probably some huge, grand story told in their "unique" way. The problem is unless you're super famous studios don't trust you to make that movie, and even when they do you still only make Avatar. However these guys managed to do it, and constructed a fairly beautiful story made out of many different pieces that have no right fitting together. This is one of those movies where you can watch it multiple times, and realize something new about the story it is telling each time. Because it was made by an artist, who believes that the ultimate beauty is a story told through film. And so by having painstakingly studied many other examples, he was able to create his own interpretation and representation of that beauty. Just like Ben does with Meredith and his art exhibit.
Monday, October 12, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Episode 6: Cashback
After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.
Gordon and Geoff watch an awesome independent comedy that turns out to be a surprisingly great watch. The thumbnail on Netflix screams stupid teenager comedy; A topless girl in a grocery store. Nice. I'm sure we all wanted to watch it, seeing her scroll through while browsing movies, but couldn't bring ourselves to sit through the inevitable fart and masturbation jokes. Never fear listener, Gordon and Geoff have dug through the Netflix garbage and found gold. Also, we talk about Pawn Sacrifice and Narcos. Next week, we'll be watching 23:59.
| Gordon: | ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Friday, October 2, 2015
Episode 5: The General
When Union spies steal an engineer's beloved locomotive, he pursues it single-handedly and straight through enemy lines.
Gordon and Geoff watch a silent film, allowing us to talk through the movie for your listening pleasure. I recommend only checking out the commentary if you are watching the movie with us as just listening to it alone may be a little confusing. Unfortunately, The General was removed from Netflix streaming this month. Fortunately, the movie is available on YouTube:
Also, we talk about Black Mass, Alt-J, and we revist Toad Road. Next week, we'll be watching Cashback.
The Podcast:
The Commentary:| Gordon: | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Random Ramblings 0: Better Start Somewhere
Well, we've discussed the blog, and posting in it for a few weeks now. It's practically a recurring joke on the podcast that eventually we'll start writing things. I'm not really sure why we think we can or should though. We're both engineers, which is Latin for illiterate or some other word I can't think of; and as always, fuck research. The point of it is we don't really do much creative writing anymore, that shit stopped back in high school and the well has, at least for me, dried up. We started this podcast thanks to my beautiful explanation (rant) on why Jurassic World was a steaming shitpile of a movie though, so I argue that there's got to be at least something going on up there. So in my ever continuing effort to avoid real work and feel like I'm doing something I at least claim to enjoy I decided to make good on our promise to blag. If only I could settle on a topic. Luckily our podcast has a theme, randomness. We don't pick what we watch, we let God or a random number generator decide, and it's been going surprisingly well. We manage to talk for around 40 minutes about movies we had no urge to see and about topics we probably never would have thought relevant or important. So I'm carrying that over to this. I googled random subject letting them know that I was in fact feeling lucky and came up with this. It's a nifty little site for writers that has a bunch of different "random things" buttons each with their own purpose. I'm not going to bother explaining it you can click on a link if you care so damn much. The point is, I decided to use it to dictate what I write about. Before doing that I will admit I cheated. I clicked through a bunch of the possible options just to see what I might be getting myself into and sadly the outlook isn't that optimistic. There is at most 15 different topics that can come up, and they aren't really the type of things I'd want to talk about on a blog for a podcast starring two idiots who watch shitty movies. But, you've got to start somewhere, and I've already done enough research for one blog post so fuck it and fuck you. In fairness to the process, I did reload the page from scratch, and committed to using whatever prompt showed up after a single click of the button, assuming I liked it of course. And I did! What are the odds? Slim given all the other possible options I had already clicked through. More surprisingly it was one I hadn't yet seen, which is odd considering most had cycled through at least four times. Now that I've sufficiently built it up here it is, "Write about someone who irritates you."
Everyone. Shit that was easy. And short. Talk about anti-climatic. I guess I'll get more specific then. If I really had to pick a single person out of all of you pieces of shit that irritated me the most, I would actually have to pick myself. And honestly, if any of you would answer otherwise, you're fucking wrong and stupid as shit. We are our own worst enemies at all times. Every day you do shit and then wonder "why the fuck did I just do that shit?" See what I mean? You're irritating as fuck. I'm irritated at myself right this second, writing a fucking blog post that two people might read rather than doing my work that I know for a fact would by seen by at least like, three people. We're always getting in our own way, holding ourselves back, and putting ourselves down in some form or another. It's that constant strive for perfection that allows us to really really hate ourselves when we "fail." I put that in quotes because obviously we don't. I will still finish my work and do other things, but I won't do them as well as I know I could, even if I do them really fucking well. I've gotten A's on assignments, been praised by managers for what I deliver all for work that I thought was pretty shitty. And I don't say that to ramble about how amazing I am, I'm saving that for its own post, but more to drive home that idea that we always irritate ourselves. I think this is a good thing though, I genuinely think it's the best answer to this question because we need to irritate ourselves. If we don't then we'd all be lazy blobs of shit who wouldn't do anything to better ourselves be that physically mentally or emotionally. Without it we'd all be fat, immature and legally retarded but think that everything was great with our lives and ourselves. We would be like the people in Wall-e or some shit. How's that for some forced movie references? Gotta stick to the real meat of this project right? It's this irritation that pushes us to better ourselves, to expect what we know we are capable of from ourselves, hell it even makes us write shitty blog posts on a website noone visits. Irritation is a powerful tool to initiate action. Just look at kids. Those things are annoying as fuck, and I'm pretty sure they fucking know it. But they get whatever they fucking want just so they'll shut the fuck up and give you some goddamned peace and quiet.
I swear this wasn't planned, but honestly what a perfect topic for a first post. It was irritation with my inactivity that drove me to start typing in the first place. It's the same irritation that makes me edit the podcast that all what? 36? of you listen to, and it's the same irritation that makes me do my work, or go to the gym, or not eat that seventh slice of pizza or whatever the fuck else. So I say stay irritated, and honestly you should be concerned as fuck if your answer to the question who irritates you the most isn't yourself.
I'm going to label this post number 0, since we love doing stupid shit like that here at Random Reviews and Other Ramblings. I've already found a way better site for prompts. If I had found that first, this whole post would've been about rodents instead. Goddamn that would have been amazing. So don't expect this weird existential shit, it's not normal and really has no place here, but this is practice post #0, so go fuck yourself.
Everyone. Shit that was easy. And short. Talk about anti-climatic. I guess I'll get more specific then. If I really had to pick a single person out of all of you pieces of shit that irritated me the most, I would actually have to pick myself. And honestly, if any of you would answer otherwise, you're fucking wrong and stupid as shit. We are our own worst enemies at all times. Every day you do shit and then wonder "why the fuck did I just do that shit?" See what I mean? You're irritating as fuck. I'm irritated at myself right this second, writing a fucking blog post that two people might read rather than doing my work that I know for a fact would by seen by at least like, three people. We're always getting in our own way, holding ourselves back, and putting ourselves down in some form or another. It's that constant strive for perfection that allows us to really really hate ourselves when we "fail." I put that in quotes because obviously we don't. I will still finish my work and do other things, but I won't do them as well as I know I could, even if I do them really fucking well. I've gotten A's on assignments, been praised by managers for what I deliver all for work that I thought was pretty shitty. And I don't say that to ramble about how amazing I am, I'm saving that for its own post, but more to drive home that idea that we always irritate ourselves. I think this is a good thing though, I genuinely think it's the best answer to this question because we need to irritate ourselves. If we don't then we'd all be lazy blobs of shit who wouldn't do anything to better ourselves be that physically mentally or emotionally. Without it we'd all be fat, immature and legally retarded but think that everything was great with our lives and ourselves. We would be like the people in Wall-e or some shit. How's that for some forced movie references? Gotta stick to the real meat of this project right? It's this irritation that pushes us to better ourselves, to expect what we know we are capable of from ourselves, hell it even makes us write shitty blog posts on a website noone visits. Irritation is a powerful tool to initiate action. Just look at kids. Those things are annoying as fuck, and I'm pretty sure they fucking know it. But they get whatever they fucking want just so they'll shut the fuck up and give you some goddamned peace and quiet.
I swear this wasn't planned, but honestly what a perfect topic for a first post. It was irritation with my inactivity that drove me to start typing in the first place. It's the same irritation that makes me edit the podcast that all what? 36? of you listen to, and it's the same irritation that makes me do my work, or go to the gym, or not eat that seventh slice of pizza or whatever the fuck else. So I say stay irritated, and honestly you should be concerned as fuck if your answer to the question who irritates you the most isn't yourself.
I'm going to label this post number 0, since we love doing stupid shit like that here at Random Reviews and Other Ramblings. I've already found a way better site for prompts. If I had found that first, this whole post would've been about rodents instead. Goddamn that would have been amazing. So don't expect this weird existential shit, it's not normal and really has no place here, but this is practice post #0, so go fuck yourself.
Friday, September 25, 2015
Episode 4: Toad Road
Gordon and Geoff watch a weird genre blend of a film. This movie uses documentary footage of heavy drug use and then blends in a horror/thriller story in to it. It's probably not worth your time watching this one but maybe give it a go if you're really super mega bored. Also, we talk about the new Destiny DLC and Edge-Fest 2015. Next week, we'll be watching The General. It's a silent film so we get a unique opportunity to record while watching! A commentary if you will!
| Gordon: | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Episode 3: A Killer Among Us
After her mother's murder, a determined teenager agrees to help the detective in charge of the case, and eventually uncovers shocking family secrets.
Gordon and Geoff watch a Lifetime thriller! This movie is a pretty straightforward mystery about a murderer. Except you know who the murderer was before you even start the flick. If you want to avoid spoilers, don't look at the thumbnail on Netflix. Also we talk about Dope, Hot Pursuit, and Iron Maiden. Next week, we'll be watching Toad Road.
| Gordon: | ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Episode 2: Splinters
The villagers of Papua New Guinea hope to make a better life by becoming professional surfers, a competitive endeavor that tests their courage.
Gordon and Geoff watch a documentary about the clash of Eastern and Western culture in Papua New Guinea. The doc is barely about surfing at all! This is the Vaughnest movie ever! Gordon also tells us about American Ultra and Geoff plays the new Magic Origins video game. Next week, we'll be watching A Killer Among Us.
| Gordon: | ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ |
| Geoff: | ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ |
This episode may contain spoilers for the following:
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